The Banker and the Fisherman: Lessons in Life, Happiness & Wealth for the 21st Century

By Ronald Roge

You will probably spend a century on this planet. Are you ready? You have goals to achieve, a future to plan, gifts to give, a legacy to design. The Banker and the Fisherman provides a rational and realistic look at life's issues and how to handle them. Along the way, every insight is infused with the ultimate lesson: how to live a rich life in ways that have nothing to do with money.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ronald Roge
• Release date: Jul 21, 2010
• ISBN: 9780982008225

Ronald Roge

Ronald W. Rogé is a nationally recognized wealth manager. He is the founder, chairman, and chief executive officer (CEO) of R.W. Rogé & Company, Inc., an investment advisory firm organized in 1986. Ron has an extensive background as a corporate executive, having held positions in engineering, marketing, and corporate finance.In 2005 Bloomberg Wealth Manager magazine selected Ron as one of Bloomberg’s Top Wealth Managers. The Robb Report—Worth magazine voted Ron as one of the Nation’s 100 Most Exclusive Wealth Advisors in 2004. In 2006 Investment Advisor magazine chose Ron to head up the list of the 25 Most Influential People in the profession. Ron is frequently quoted by the media, including the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Business Week, Fortune, Newsday, and Money magazine, and is often asked to lecture other advisors at conferences and trade shows.Ron earned a bachelor of science degree from Long Island University and a master of science degree in business administration from Polytechnic University. He is a member of the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (NAPFA) and the Financial Planning Association (FPA).

Book preview

Foreword

Ron Rogé could be the poster boy for independent financial advice. In case you’ve been living on the moon—or in New York City, which tends to be overshadowed by Wall Street’s marketing mavens—let me tell you: independent advice is a very good thing. I’ve been covering independent advisors since 1984, and that experience has given me great respect for these professionals. Like Ron, virtually all of them could have made a lot more money as stockbrokers or insurance agents, but they chose independence in order to better serve their clients.

As the public gradually became aware they had an alternative to in-house financial salespeople, independent advisors—including Ron—became more successful. So much so that today even the least independent stockbroker prefers to call him- or herself a financial advisor. It’s one of the great untold American success stories: How a small group of dedicated professionals intent on doing the right thing changed the face of financial advice and, along the way, attained a measure of success they never imagined.

Ron was one of the leaders of that group, which back in the mid- 1980s originally numbered fewer than 100 people. They called themselves the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (NAPFA), and believed their profession should put clients’ interests first, free from the economic pressures of buying and selling financial products. In exchange for their advice they charged fees directly to their clients rather than taking sales commissions from brokerage firms or insurance companies.

Ron was chosen to head up the public relations efforts of this fee-only movement, largely, I’ve always suspected, because he was the only board member who lived in proximity to the influential financial magazines, newspapers, and networks in New York City. Through the late 1980s and early 1990s, Ron became a one-man publicity campaign whose goal was to promote the benefits of fee-only, independent financial advice to the public through the media.

At first, Ron’s reception at many financial publications was chilly, to say the least. Reporters and the public alike were brainwashed to believe that the only serious financial advice came from Wall Street. Slowly, however, the idea of independent advice and fees paid directly by clients began to sink in. More and more journalists and editors got it, writing stories about independent advice; perhaps more important, they began more frequently to quote independent advisors as objective experts.

Ron’s watershed day—and that of the independent advisory movement—came on September 30, 1996, when Merrill Lynch announced it was moving its 15,000 or so retail brokers away from commissions to fee compensation. Merrill’s television ads stated, No commissions on transactions for a wide variety of investments, including stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. A small but growing band of client-oriented advisors—led by Ron and others—had made independent advice so popular that giant Merrill Lynch, along with the rest of Wall Street, radically changed the way it did business in an effort to keep up. (Of course, no matter what they claim to do on Wall Street, advice given by employee brokers isn’t, by NAPFA standards, truly independent. That’s made clear by the snowballing success of Ron and other independent advisors, and by Wall Street’s continuing efforts to respond to them.)

I first met Ron at NAPFA’s 1993 national convention in San Francisco, while he was in the middle of his media blitz. I was a senior editor on the team that had recently launched Worth magazine, and I’m sure Ron was schmoozing me just like he was all the other journalists. Yet, after just a few minutes of conversation, I realized that Ron was not only extraordinarily interested in his clients’ well-being but also knowledgeable on a broad range of subjects far beyond finance. He also had a charming wit that often contained a deep underlying wisdom.

That day was warm and sunny, so Ron and I played hooky from the conference. After a great lunch in a wharf-side restaurant, we explored the marina district and watched the seals on the docks, and talking like we were old friends. I’m glad to say, we’ve been friends ever since. Professionally, I’ve followed Ron’s career as he grew his advisory practice into one of the most successful in the industry, all the while exhibiting the objectivity, client orientation, and independence of the best of financial advisors.

Ron has stayed on the cutting edge of independent advice with innovations such as seeking out smaller, undiscovered fund managers; designing programs to service smaller clients’ goals; networking with other advisors to share their collective experience and wisdom; and, most recently, creating his own fund of mutual funds to lower client costs and adding stock analysis (via his son, Steve) to increase the upside potential of the portfolios they manage.

The Banker and the Fisherman collects the wisdom Ron has gained in his 22 years as a professional advisor, working with clients from all walks of life and observing the markets and the financial services industry. It’s not your typical personal finance book, yet both financial consumers and financial professionals will benefit greatly from reading it. Concerned as much with why we need to take control of our financial lives as how to do it, Ron tackles the tough issues of why Americans don’t save more money or even take a greater role in planning for their financial futures. The insights he offers come from a diverse and surprising array of sources, including Viktor E. Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning, Warren Buffett, and the US Marines.

Ron’s answer to why we don’t sock away more, even though a bunch of us are rapidly approaching retirement age, lies uptown from the wire houses, up on Madison Avenue. Without even realizing it, he writes, most of us have allowed the great American marketing machine to tell us what we need, when we need it. Today’s advertising is so good at convincing us to buy things that there is little left over for our piggy banks. Ron has come to realize that we need to hearken back to our core beliefs if we ever hope to stop listening to advertising’s siren lures and use our financial resources to take care of ourselves and the people around us.

In his own down-to-earth style, Ron gently but powerfully shows us how to take control of our lives and our finances. He does so by relating his experiences and observations of some of the brightest minds in finance, the people who helped shape his life, and what’s worked for his clients. The Banker and the Fisherman is a road map for true financial success, including discussions of how each of us defines success and how to create a plan to get there. Along the way, Ron shows us how to leave a legacy, prepare for our retirement, and overcome disastrous knee-jerk investment decisions. Of his Ten Commandments of Investing, my favorites are number 7: Thou shalt not invest in companies without earnings, and number 10: Thou shalt not seek stock recommendations from neighbors, friends, or brothers-in-law.

Most important of all, Ron tells us how to live simpler, more meaningful lives—despite what the advertisers tell us we need to have. This remarkable book is about deciding what we really want before we waste a lot of time and effort pursuing something meaningless. It’s a book about understanding our lives, our culture, and the financial services industry, and about how we can find meaning and attain happiness in the midst of it all.

The wisdom in The Banker and the Fisherman springs from a perspective that is truly independent of Wall Street and Madison Avenue and all the pressures— real or imagined—that life today imposes on us. I hope you enjoy Ron’s excellent counsel and benefit from it as much as I have.

Bob Clark

Contributing Editor, Investment Advisor

Former Editor, Worth

Preface

You will probably spend a century on this planet.

One hundred years of life to live. Excellent medical care has become the norm in the United States. That, combined with a bit of luck, is going to make living for a century—or longer—more common. In that time, you will have unique roles to play, special events to plan and attend, and individual responsibilities to fulfill. There will also come a time when the end of life resembles its beginnings, when you will need support and care from others. This need not be a helpless stage. With careful long-term planning, you can ensure that your wishes will be respected and that your foresight will protect your quality of life.

There have been and will be goals to achieve, futures to plan, gifts to give, and legacies to design. Each of these tasks will require you to engage in meaningful dialogue with your wealth management team. Each of these life stages, and the concepts associated with them, is outlined in this book. But this is not a course in economic theory; there is no beginning and no end. Take a look at the table of contents and choose any title you are in the mood to read at a given moment. At whatever page you choose to begin reading, that’s the right page. Financial planning works on the same principle. Whenever you choose to begin, that’s the right time.

And there are plenty of reasons to create new beginnings. We’ve structured The Banker and the Fisherman in five sections that mirror five phases of life and five aspects of planning. The book opens with the essential life lessons that continue to guide and inspire our work. Each of the six chapters in this section is meant to encourage you to think about your own influences and your priorities as you work toward your goals. We then move on to advice about financing your home and saving for your children’s education, followed by a discussion of investment strategies and tools. Retirement income, issues concerning long-term care, and estate planning wrap up the book.

While researching and writing about each of these topics, we’ve learned lessons from bankers, fishermen, rabbis, parents, high-school teachers, old friends, and clients like you. The book’s title—The Banker and the Fisherman— reflects the diversity of those who have taught us and how humbled we have been by the privilege of learning.

Each chapter in the book’s five sections originally appeared in our newsletter, The Rogé Report. They do not, however, appear here in their original forms. We’ve restructured, refreshed, and

Reviews for The Banker and the Fisherman

[Khan David · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This audio-book was really easy to listen and understand, but more importantly the wealth of information I learned was so helpful and Practical!